MBA aspirants file RTIs, may move court
Even as many students got calls from the Indian Institutes of Management (IIMs) and other business schools for personal interviews and group discussions, many others are upset with their low scores in the Common Admission Test (CAT) and are raising a “transparency” issue with the institutes, besides mulling legal action.
The IIMs were just recovering from the uproar over technical glitches during the CAT. Now, at least five students have filed applications under the Right to Information (RTI) law. More are said to be in the offing. Students that Business Standard spoke to did not wish to be named, but said they are also in discussion with lawyers. More, some IIM professors are said to be lending support to the entire initiative, as they were themselves not happy at the manner the first computer-based CAT had been conducted.
"We have a team of people who take the exam from our institute. We divide the sections among us and attempt only that. So, many of us just attended one section, but have ended with scores as high as the 86 to 90 percentile. We are sure this has happened to students across the board," said a faculty member from one such institute.
"IIM professors have told us to go ahead and file a complaint, as none is coming forward with an explanation on the procedure they used to score us. Besides, Prometric (the agency conducting the test) has also not been helpful in removing our doubts," said a student, who said he had scored highly in the US-administered Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) but not in CAT, "despite it being an easy paper".
After IIM-Ahmedabad said it had replaced its admission procedure from a point-based system to one with more weightage to class X and XII marks, students have been upset about not having been informed earlier.
A CAT candidate said, "It is unfair of IIM-A to change the admission procedure after the results, although they may have the right to do this. The entire CAT 2009 had been a shock for us and this only makes matters worse for us."
"We don't try to search for different permutations and combinations by excluding a particular criterion like Class X or XII scores while screening candidates, as we do not want to come across as biased. Instead, we feed all the pre-requisites of selection criteria into a system and send call letters to all those who fit the eligibility criteria.
